1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to electronic network communication systems and devices, and to a method for reducing a network addressing header.
2. Description of Related Art
Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) has long been used as the Internet addressing standard. The number of IPv4 addresses, while vast, is finite, and address exhaustion is an emerging problem. Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) was developed to solve address depletion associated with IPv4-based Internet use, and has features such as an expanded 128-bit address system, a simplified header structure, improved quality of service (QoS), and enhanced security.
However, long packet addressing headers degrade the processing speed of routers and nodes that process Internet traffic, thereby slowing down the overall performance of the Internet. In particular, multimedia traffic, such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) traffic or video conference traffic, is significantly affected by transmission delay or jitter of the network.
In reality, the current Internet cannot be rapidly converted into an IPv6 network since the IPv4 network is widely used. The IPv4 network and the IPv6 network will coexist for the time being while the IPv4 network is gradually replaced by the IPv6 network.
Coexistence of IPv6 hosts/routers and IPv4 hosts/routers in an IPv4/IPv6 combination network induce coexistence of IPv4 and IPv6 addressing headers during packet transmission, such as in an IPv4 over IPv6 context or an IPv6 over IPv4 context. Coexistence of IPv4 and IPv6 addressing headers slows down addressing header processing.